- How do people in your field [or: people sharing your interest in ___________] use blogs to communicate with different publics?
- How can you use blogs in your career, your hobby or just life in general?
FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND ... Follow the links at the top of The Mackerel Wrapper, and you'll see examples of student blogs from COMM 337 last year and a link to earlier blogs in COMM 207 and other courses. There's also a link to a basic on-line feature on blogging by "Robin Good." [Ha ha - Robin Good rhymes with Robin Hood - laugh, I thought I'd die! OK, OK, it isn't that funny. But it has some good here's-how-to-get-started type information.
Then find some blogs you're interested in. I'd do a Google keyword search - for example "blog" and "aardvarks" if I were interested in aardvarks - and visit a couple of the sites. See how they do it.
You can Google up blogs with keywords like "baseball" or "Chicago Cubs" ... anything from aardvarks to zebras. Well, we already talked about aardvarks. Anteaters to zebras, then. I think you'll find the best blogs are used as marketing tools, often in conjunction with social media. Professional services people like to use them to give away a little sample product - tips on marketing or home repair, etc. - and entice surfers and and first-time page-clickers (hey, I just made up a word) to become customers.
Enough examples and chitchat. You get the idea. See what you can find out there ...
Then answer the questions above. Until you're comfortable with the blogging software, I think you might want to compose it in Microsoft Word and dump it into the blogger. That way you won't lose it if you hit the wrong key and it vanishes into thin air.
As an example, I'll link below to some blogs I consult. I'm not going to pretend they're the most important blogs out there. They're just a couple that I think present their material effectively. If there's
Illinois state government. Rich Miller runs a newsletter called Capitol Fax on state government and politics. It costs $350 a year, and its subscribers are elected officials, government agencies, lobbyists and other people who work with the state Legislature and the agencies. He also has a blog called CapitolFax.com with samples of his product - and a very interesting Comment field that has some of the most informed commentary on state government anywhere. Click here to read a typical post on something the newspapers that cover state government missed. And something else that one of Miller's readers, a longtime budget official named Schnorf, corrected. Surf around the Cap Fax website and look for paid ads and features marked SUBSCRIBERS ONLY. By all accounts, Miller makes a decent living.
U.S. Supreme Court. SCOTUSblog is sponsored by Goldstein Howe & Russell law firm of Washington, D.C. Its name is an acronym for the Supreme Court of the U.S. Its reporter Lyle Denniston is considered one of the most knowledgeable guys in athe field, and when a decision is handed down I go to SCOTUSblog first to know what the legal issues were. All too often they don't even get mentioned in the mainstream media. Denniston isn't an attorney, by the way, but he's been a courthouse reporter since 1948. When newspapers started downsizing in the 1980s and 90s, the courthouse beat was one of the first to go. Now we go to blogs.
Old-time music. Here's a blog from something called the Canaan Institute in upstate New York. I found it when I was looking for information on an old-time band that I like, and I was impressed by its notices of upcoming events. A lot of performers have blogs, too, although they tend to not keep them up if they're on the road a lot.
My other blog. It's called Hogfiddle, and I'll link you to my about page which tells you what a "hogfiddle" is and what the blog is about. Warning: A lot of the stuff on my blog is pretty obscure, but that's the kind of stuff I'm getting published these days. It started out as a student blog - a lot like this one - for cultural studies classes I used to teach. Now it's mostly a research blog, and a place for me to post sound files of songs I want to learn. But I also keep an updated resume on the blog, which I use as a marketing tool.
8 comments:
Blogs in general are a way to express emotions and opinions for others to see. Other's who comment or read your blog may or may not agree with you. However, I re- read a blog I typed in September of 2010 for another class and realized during that time of writing I was expressing feelings for others to know about and to realize who I am. Sharing interests helps one learn more about a topic or idea. Also, when one does not agree they care express their feelings of why they do not agree. Having two opinions could bring people closer together in a compromise depending on the blog topic.
Blogs are like billboards on the internet. Its a way to communicate with all kinds of people about anything and everything. Like sports, politcs, etc. Blogs are a way to get information and get feedback on what you or someone on the blog. I have my own blog, and have written on all kinds of different subjects for my classes. I once wrote a poem on a red saxaphone which I still like to read to this day. My old blog posts are way to teach me what I can improve on my writting skills.
People use blogs to communicate about everything! I could use a blog in my career, hobby, or life in general to just express my opinions and view opinions of others around me. Knownng how others think and feel can effect your everyday encounters. I personally do not blog because it takes time.
Blogs are interactions between people who share different ideas on information of events that are shared world-wide. It is a great communicative source to hear or see other people's thoughts about how they feel about a certain topic. For example, stories on 9/11. There would be a lot of opinions and comments on the destruction that marred our nation. However, as far as my opinion goes, our country is strong and will never give up.
A blog is basically an online journal that can be completely random and personal or can be devoted to a specific idea or specialization. They are becoming more effective as online communication becomes the standard for people in the professional spectrum. As you said before, blogs are most productive when they are used in a marketing form or as a promotional tool. They are also an effective way to learn about concepts that you are not familiar with; because bloggers will post opinions and vent frustrations which gives the reader a broad overview of the public opinion over the the blog topic.
Blogs are your opinions on specific stories your read on the internet. Blogging helps you gain greater knowledge on a specific topic by reading the thoughts of other people. You recieve the story from different perspectives when reading peoples blogs.
Everyone can use blogs for careers, sports, hobbies, or life in general. Blogging is a great way to get your opionion out in the open for the world to see.
Blogs are used to connect with others with similar interest, to express opinoins, to gain feedback, to teach, to learn, and to document. Blogs can be used to promote yourself, your business, or your ideas.
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